This too me longer to find than it should have done, so I'm writing it here for future me.

When you install CouchDB, it is in a mode where anyone can do anything with the database including creating and deleting databases. This is called "Admin Party" mode which is a pretty cool name, but not what I want.

Creating admin users

To create a user in 1.6 (I've not used 2.0 yet, but assuming it's the same) you simply click on the "Fix This" link in Futon which is available at http://localhost:5984/_utils/ by default.

As CouchDB's entire API is essentially a RESTFul API, to do this via the command line, you simply PUT a new user to into the _configs/admins collection like this:

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curl-s-XPUThttp://localhost:5984/_config/admins/rob-d'"123456"'

This creates an admin user called rob with a password of 123456. Note that the password within the body of the PUT request must be a quoted string. This caught me out for a while!

From this point on, we can then use basic authentication to do admin-y things, such as create a bookshelf_api database:

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$curl-s-XPUThttp://rob:123456@localhost:5984/bookshelf_api

{"ok":true}

Other users

You can also set up per-database users which is handy for limiting what your application can do when connected to CouchDB. This is done creating users in the /_users/ collection and then assigning them to a class in the _security collection of the database. There are two default classes: "members" and "admins" where members can modify data, but not design documents and admins can modify all documents including user roles on that database.

I recently came across Don’t be that dude: Handy tips for the male academic, an article covering 20 actions that the author identified as things that men do everyday to perpetuate inequality. A number seem specific to the academic world, but the majority are relevant everywhere.

Now, 20 items is a lot to remember, so I want to call out a few that I see regularly when I'm in offices and at conferences. They are all about respect for the individual and while they aren't necessarily gender specific, I personally have seen many more men doing these things to women than vice-versa and cringe every time I notice.

Don't talk about someone's appearance

Don’t comment on a woman’s appearance in a professional context. It doesn’t matter what your intentions are; it’s irrelevant. Similarly, don’t tell someone they don’t look like a scientist/professor/academic, that they look too young, or they should smile.

Complimenting someone on they way that they look rather than what they have achieved or do is demeaning and disrespectful. Nobody tells me that they like the way that I've ironed my shirt, but I've been in meetings with potential clients where a man has introduced his colleague to me by saying that she must have dressed up today because of the meeting. He didn't comment on the dress sense of any of his male colleagues when introducing them and left me feeling uncomfortable. I have no idea how the woman felt; different and unwelcome I expect.

Be aware of what you say about people, especially women. If you find that you do seem to mention your colleague's clothing or (lack of) makeup, then train yourself to stop talking about it. If you feel like you must make small talk, then find a different topic: something in the news, the travel situation, anything else!

Don't interrupt

Don’t talk over your female colleagues. There is a lot of social conditioning that goes into how men and women communicate differently. You may not realize that you’re doing it, but if you find yourself interrupting women, or speaking over them, stop.

The general case here is don't interrupt. However, it's much more common to see a man who listens intently when his male colleagues are talking, but interrupts and talks over a woman in the meeting. I think this happens because the man doesn't even hear the woman. This is especially frustrating for me as when if you're paying for my time at a meeting, then everyone's input is important.

Pay attention to your own behaviour in meetings. In particular, check that someone else isn't talking the you want to make your point. If you notice that you are interrupting someone else talking, then start consciously waiting for a pause before talking. Your point won't be less important because you waited a few minutes before speaking.

Make tea for and minute your own meetings

Volunteer when someone asks for a note-taker, coffee-run gopher, or lunch order-taker at your next meeting. Don’t let this task fall to women, even if they tend to volunteer (we’re socially conditioned to do so). Make sure that women aren’t being asked to do this more than men.

I see this all the time in client meetings where there is a mix of gender in the room and I now get a bit embarrassed as I used to be that man.

At a previous job, I didn't initially even realise that I was letting a woman team member do much more than her fair share of the tea making rounds. Once I did realise, I told myself that as the senior lead, it was a better use of resources to let the junior members do tea making. That was rubbish. At some point I was educated on this phenomenon and worked on changing the culture by explicitly asking different team members to make the tea.

I have one client where the rule is that the host of the meeting is the note taker and lunch handler which works really well too as it's clear that if you want this meeting to take place, then you get to do some of the leg work. I don't know why they introduced this system: I suspect that it was to promote fewer meetings, but the end result is fairer too.

To sum up

You should read the full list of 20 points as all are worthy of consideration and behaviour change. I've called out the three that I've had to personally work on and improve at and are the ones that I most want to see change on.

As a mostly keyboard user, I take advantage of the keyboard shortcuts in Sublime Text. However, the sidebar is quite a lot of effort to manage, especially as I mostly leave it closed.

Firstly, you need cmd+k,cmd+b to open it. Then you type ctrl+k,ctrl+0 to focus it as opening it doesn't automatically set focus. Then you can navigate to the file you want and open it via pressing return. Finally, you type cmd+k,cmd+b to close it again.

That's a lot of keyboard combinations! Note also that you swap from cmd to ctrl too.

Revealing the current file

I find that I often want to open the side bar with the currently open file highlighted. There's a command for this: reveal_in_side_bar which you assign to a keyboard shortcut like this:

{ "keys": ["super+shift+1"], "command": "reveal_in_side_bar"},

Now, pressing cmd+shift+1 will open the sidebar with the current file highlighted. You still need to press ctrl+k,ctrl+0 to focus though.

Automating with plugins

There's a plugin called FocusFileOnSidebar that solves this problem, so if you have this workflow, then install it now.

Done

With the combination of FocusFileOnSidebar and HideSidebarWhenNotFocussed, the sidebar works the way I want it to!

It's closed most of the time, I press shift+cmd+1 to open it with focus set on the currently highlight file. If I open another file by pressing return or go back to what I was doing by pressing Esc, then the sidebar automatically closes as it should.

Once I installed Homebrew's curl for HTTP/2 usage, I discovered that I couldn't automatically proxy SSL through Charles Proxy any more.

$ export HTTPS_PROXY=https://localhost:8888
$ curl https://api.joind.in/v2.1/
curl: (60) SSL certificate problem: self signed certificate in certificate chain
More details here: https://curl.haxx.se/docs/sslcerts.html
curl performs SSL certificate verification by default, using a "bundle"
of Certificate Authority (CA) public keys (CA certs). If the default
bundle file isn't adequate, you can specify an alternate file
using the --cacert option.
If this HTTPS server uses a certificate signed by a CA represented in
the bundle, the certificate verification probably failed due to a
problem with the certificate (it might be expired, or the name might
not match the domain name in the URL).
If you'd like to turn off curl's verification of the certificate, use
the -k (or --insecure) option.

This is a nuisance.

As I've noted previously, you need to install Charles' root certificate to use it with SSL. On OS X, you do Help -> SSL Proxying -> Install Charles Root Certificate which installs it into the system keychain.

However, this doesn't work with the Homebrew curl or with the curl functions inside PHP. To fix this, we need to add the Charles root certificate to OpenSSL's default_cert_file.

I've talked about this file before. The quickest way to find it is to run:

It discusses the fact that most APIs that are self-described as RESTful are not hypermedia driven and hence are not actually RESTful as originally defined by Roy Fielding. Evert goes on to state that therefore the term "REST API" has changed to mean an HTTP API that isn't hypermedia-driven.

I think that what the world currently calls RESTful APIs fall short in more ways than just not serving Hypermedia links.

Media-types provide value

The majority of HTTP APIs out there do not reap the benefits of using media types correctly either. The majority seem to use application/json and call it done. The client gets absolutely no information about how to read the data, other than they'll need a JSON decoder… This is like having an HTML file and using a `.txt` file extension. It's correct in the sense that the the file is plain text, but absolutely useless for interpreting the file to render a web page.

Media types allow an API to inform the client how to interpret the data in the payload. This is arguably much harder than adding hypermedia to an API. The correct media types enforces the structure of the payload and also what the payload data means.

This is why most APIs just use application/json. If you're lucky, there's some documentation somewhere that explains things. Half the time, we seem to expect client developers to read the JSON and interpret it based on experience.

The best example of where this works well is the media type "text/html". Given a payload in this media type, a web browser can render the information in the way that the web developer (api server) automatically. This is because every server that sends a document with a text/html payload sends the same tags for the same meaning.

We can do this in the API world too, but it requires thinking about and is harder, so it doesn't happen…

There is no practical difference between an API that uses a Plain media type and one that uses a Vendor specific one. As a client developer, you have no clue how to interact with the API or deal with its payload. To integrate with this API you need Google and hope you find enough documentation.

An API that uses what I've called standard media types give a client developer a leg-up. There's an official specification on how the data in the payload is organised. The standard is documented! This makes a difference.

You always need human-readable documentation to integrate with an API. A standard media type, implemented properly, makes it much easier. For starters you don't need to write as much as the standard has taken care of a good proportion of the boring bits. Something like HAL's curies provides an unambiguous way for the developer to find the right documentation for the endpoint they are dealing with.

JSON-API's pagination and filtering rules mean that I can write code once that will work with every API that uses JSON-API that I have to integrate with. This is powerful!

We can even go further with structured data as defined at schema.org to provide standardised field names for our data, but that's a topic for another day.

Evert is correct

I've used Evert's post to point out that when we talk about Hypermedia in a RESTful API, we mean more than simply putting in a few links in the payload.

Going back to Evert's article, he is correct; the term "REST API" is pretty much meaningless and at best simply means "An API that works over HTTP with some awareness of what an HTTP method is". The current term for an API that meets the constraints of REST is "Hypermedia API".

I think that providing an API with hypermedia & a well-documented media-type is beneficial for every API. APIs last longer than you believe and it's a competitive advantage if a developer can integrate with yours easier and faster than with your competitor's.

To this end, I've been playing with Kitura, a web framework for Swift 3 by the Swift@IBM team. It's inspired by Express and so the basic operation is familiar to me. As is my wont, I decided to write an introductory tutorial showing how to build a simple API using Kitura: Getting Started with Kitura. It turns out that trying to show someone else how to do something is a great way to find out if you understand it!

My first ZF tutorial was written in a word processor and saved to PDF. I've learned since then, and so this one is written in Markdown and each part is a separate HTML page! There's 6 parts at the moment and I intend to expand on that as I get time.

Obviously, I'm new to Swift as it's only been available for Linux since last December, so any corrections and improvements gratefully received!

Incredibly, it's been 10 years since I announced my Zend Framework 1 tutorial!

The first code release of Zend Framework (0.1.1) was in March 2006 and I wrote my tutorial against 0.1.5. Just under a year later, in July 2006, version 1.0 was released and I updated my tutorial throughout all the releases up to 1.12. ZF1 had a good run, but all good things come to an end and the official end of life for ZF1 is 28th September 2016. I'm proud that the ZF1 community has been able to maintain v1 for so long after ZF2 was released.

Zend Framework 2.0 was released in September 2012 and I was delighted that my tutorial formed the basis for the Quick Start guide in the official documentation. It has been significantly revised and extended from my initial work by many other people. In July 2016, Zend Framework 3 was released and there's still a Getting Started with Zend Framework tutorial; you can still see the similarities with the very first one!

If you're getting started with Zend Framework today, I hope that you find the Getting Started guide a great introduction to the framework.

Zend Framework has grown incredibly since that first release and with the continuing work on ZF3 and Expressive, it has a long life ahead of it.